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Development of an Indian conditional access system (iCAS) and growing digitisation of broadcasting have brought down prices of set-top boxes as the software cost has declined to Rs 50 per device from Rs 500 in 2011.

A quality digital set-top box costs Rs 1,250-1,300, far cheaper than in 2011 when a poor quality set-top box used to sell for Rs 2,200. The government estimates the projected demand of cable set-top boxes will soon reach 70 million.

The government had announced digitisation of cable TV in 2011 but at that time there used to be a shortage of set-top boxes and their prices were high. To tackle the problem, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) announced the iCAS project in 2013 and in 2014. The project was awarded to ByDesign India, a Bangalore-based company.

The iCAS project outlay was Rs 29.99 crore, of which MeitY’s support was Rs 19.79 crore. iCAS, or local CAS, was developed by ByDesign India in 2015 and commercially launched last year.

iCAS is available to local manufacturers of set-top boxes at $0.5 per licence, against the $4-5 per licence for foreign CAS for a three-year period.

An executive with ByDesign India said, “Set-top box prices have come down because the software platform cost has declined from $4 per box to $0.5.”

iCAS has been integrated with nine Indian manufacturers of set-top boxes and around 800,000 set-top boxes with iCAS have been deployed with 104 cable operators.

Doordarshan is leveraging iCAS to upgrade its Dish DTH platform and has placed an order for 50 million licences.

A MeitY official said security was the main concern when the government decided to launch the iCAS project, but it also wanted to bring down prices of set-top boxes and increase their supply.

NEW DELHI: A week after it refused to waive the public broadcaster’s spectrum charges of over Rs 1,200 cr, the I&B ministry has now sent yet another reminder to Prasar Bharati to review the its DD Free Dish and revenue sharing policies, which it has said, needs to be made “transparent and economically viable,” and more importantly, has asked the latter “to not subsidise private channels that do not need concessions.”

Ministry officials said, starting from August last year several reminders have been sent to Prasar Bharati to review its policy on DD Free Dish— the free-to-air DTH (direct-to-home) platform— which has 22 million subscribers, according to estimates from television viewership measurement agency Broadcast Audience Research Council of India. A ministry official said the broadcaster has not replied to any of its six reminders sent in the last four months. The latest one was sent on Tuesday, official said.

Union I&B minister Smriti Zubin Irani recently said that Doordarshan should leverage the reach created by DD Free Dish to create quality content and improve the revenue generation through advertisement and ease the burden on the taxpayers.

In a letter on March 26 to Prasar Bharati CEO, the ministry said: “It has been observed that DD Free Dish was subsidising private channels/ serial producers contrary to cabinet approval. DD Free Dish offered channels its service for as low as Rs 6-8 cr which does not cover the cost per channel that works out to approximately Rs 350 cr.”

“Channels after paying Rs 6-8 cr are said to earn up to Rs 700 cr. The channels including Sony Mix, Star Bharat, Zee Anmol cinema should not qualify for subsidy,” the letter said. Currently, there are approximately 72 TV channels on Doordarshan’s DTH platform Free Dish.

Currently there are approximately 72 TV channels on Doordarshan’s DTH platform Free Dish, including private general entertainment channels like Zee Anmol, Star Utsav, Sony Pal, Rishtey, and news channels like Aaj Tak.

The city police have arrested three distributors of a DTH (direct to home) service provider for allegedly duping the service provider to the tune of Rs84lakh.

The accused are authorised DTH distributors who allegedly misused a technical glitch in the DTH provider’s system and managed to dupe the service provider. The accused have been identified as Shammikumar Arora, 29, Gurprit Khera, 28 and Manprit Khera, 24. They all run a DTH distribution centre in Haryana.

According to the police, the complainant in the case is the general manager of the DTH service provider. The company has fixed distributors with who the company signs an agreement and provides them login IDs to access its electronic voucher distribution system. After a distributor makes a payment to the company, the company sends him voucher distribution data. Later, the distributors sell this data to the dealers, who in turn sell it to customers to recharge their DTH accounts.

If some data is unsold then the system has a facility of returning it. The dealer returns unsold vouchers to the distributor and gets refund against the same.

Police said that normally, a voucher that has already been returned after failing to be sold cannot be returned again. However, the accused made use of a glitch in the DTH provider’s system that allowed this to happen, police said.

“In this case, the accused distributor created nearly 100 fictitious dealers with fake names and addresses and returned the unsold vouchers twice and sometimes thrice. The accused later also sold these unsold data vouchers at almost half the rates to genuine dealers and pocketed the money. In all, he duped the service provider of Rs83.99 lakh,” said an officer from the NM Joshi Marg police station.

Source/ Courtesy / tvnews4u.com / New Delhi: The board also objected to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s direction to stop all e-auction of channels on DD Free Dish. The directive will “wreck the finances of PrasarBharati” and the Corporation stands to lose Rs300 crore.

Doordarshan’s Free Dish service was inaugurated in 2004 with 33 channels. It now carries 104 television channels and 40 radio channels and reaches 20 million homes. It provides coverage throughout India, except Andaman and Nicobar islands, through a set top box for which no monthly subscription fee is required.

When DD Free Dish was started, the General Entertainment Channel slots were auctioned for Rs 25 lakh a year. They now command Rs 8.5 crore a year.

The Ministry also wants general entertainment channels to be replaced by channels run by Union Ministries. However, ThePrasarBharati Board rejected the same contended that it would make the bouquet uninteresting. The viewership of Doordarshan would crash and Tata Sky and Dish TV will go laughing all the way to the Bank.

If PrasarBharati proceeds with the plan of auctioning the slots in DD FreeDish, it will severely affect the prospect of the private DTH Operators like Dish TV, Tatasky, Sun Direct etc

February 14, 2018 / Rajyavardhan Rathore, junior minister for information and broadcasting confirmed that Doordarshan has given permission to eleven companies to manufacture set top boxes with encryption for use on its DTH service DD Free Dish.

The statement confirms that the much delayed encryption of the service is on track and will be implemented once the stock of these set-top boxes starts reaching the market in sufficient numbers.

Once sufficient number of such authorized boxes are available, DD Direct Plus will stop broadcasting some of its channels openly, and will encrypt the signals. Initially, channels that are currently using MPEG-4 will be encrypted.

In other words, subscribers who wish to watch all DD Direct Plus channels will have to buy one of the authorized boxes from one of the 11 companies who have been licensed to manufacture them.

At the same time, existing users of DD Direct Plus who do not upgrade their boxes will continue to receive a certain number of channels. Eventually, DD Direct Plus is likely to switch off all open signals and force all subscribers to move to authorized boxes.

The encryption was originally supposed to start in April last year. DD is using an Indian software solution known as iCAS for encoding and decoding the signals.

Rathore said 10 private companies as well as the government-controlled BECIL or Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Ltd have so far been licensed to manufacture the new boxes.

The minister did not give the name of the ten companies.

The move to encrypt the channels is aimed at improving Doordarshan’s revenue.

Once the channels are encrypted, Doordarshan will be able to find out how many people watch its free DTH service.

Based on this number, it will be able to charge money from channels for being part of the service, also known as carriage fee.

This is good news for DD Freedish viewers who have free-to-air HD set-top box because now they can get DD National Channel in HD. DD National HD showing latest contents in high definition and old content showing in same formats (4:3).
You can feel HD picture clarity with HD Set-Top Box and HD Television. You can scan your HD set-top box at given below frequencies.

Although; this channel is also available on TATA Sky DTH at channel number 113.

As you know Prasar Bharati recently stopped analogue DVB-T broadcast from main cities of India and now started digital DTT (DVB-T2) technology. At this time by using DTT technology 8 TV channels available which you can get by using DVB-T2 digital set-top box with the help of normal yagi antenna. So now DD National HD channel is also available in DVB-T2 channels list.

As you know that DD Direct DTH recently suspended its 37th e-auction for vacant slots which scheduled to be held on 22/08/2017. on appeal of Wow cinema, TDSAT asked to Prasar Bharati why e-auction delayed.

NEW DELHI: Prasar Bharati has two days more to come out with the real reason for suspending the auctions on its DTH service FreeDish in August this year. From 27 October 2017 the telecoms and broadcast disputes tribunal TDSAT will hear two petitions challenging the decision of public broadcaster.

In the last hearing, the tribunal had told petitioners Cinema 24×7, (distributors of WOW Cinema), News Nation Network and others to file applications with Prasar Bharati. It had said it would hear the matter if not resolved by the pubcaster.

When the matter came up yesterday, only Cinema 24×7 (WOW Cinema) was represented by its counsels. Prasar Bharati, represented by Assistant Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, sought two more days to finalise the government and Prasar Bharati’s stand on the issue.

Soon after Smriti Irani became the Minister of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) few months back, the decision of halting the bids for FreeDish slot was announced. This came at a time when FreeDish was testing its MPEG4 technology in an attempt to encrypt the platform and also expand the number of TV channels that could be carried. At present 80 channels are carried on the FTA DTH platform.